Management is not just for managers, just as leadership is not just for leaders.

We all manage, and we all lead; these are not actions reserved for only those people who happen to hold these positions in a company. I personally think of management and leadership as callings, and we all get these callings to manage and lead at different times, and to different degrees. Considered another way, I believe we can all learn to be more self-governing through the disciplines of great management and great leadership; these are concepts that can give us wonderful tenets to live and work by. For instance, these are what Ive come to think of as Twelve Rules for Self-Management. Show me a business where everyone lives and works by self-managing, and Ill bet its a business destined for greatness. 1. Live by your values, whatever they are. You confuse people when you dont, because they cant predict how youll behave. 2. Speak up! No one can hear what youre thinking without you be willing to stand up for it. Mind-reading is something most people cant do. 3. Honor your own good word, and keep the promises you make. If not, people eventually stop believing most of what you say, and your words will no longer work for you. 4. When you ask for more responsibility, expect to be held fully accountable. This is what seizing ownership of something is all about; its usually an all or nothing kind of thing, and so youve got to treat it that way. 5. Dont expect people to trust you if you arent willing to be trustworthy for them first and foremost. Trust is an outcome of fulfilled expectations. 6. Be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. Good habits corral your energies into a momentum-building rhythm for you; bad habits sap your energies and drain you. 7. Have a good work ethic, for it seems to be getting rare today. Curious, for those oldfashioned values like dependability, timeliness, professionalism and diligence are prized more than ever before. Be action-oriented. Seek to make things work. Be willing to do what it takes. 8. Be interesting. Read voraciously, and listen to learn, then teach and share everything you know. No one owes you their attention; you have to earn it and keep attracting it. 9. Be nice. Be courteous, polite and respectful. Be considerate. Manners still count for an awful lot in life, and thank goodness they do. 10. Be self-disciplined. Thats what adults are supposed to grow up to be. 11. Dont be a victim or a martyr. You always have a choice, so dont shy from it: Choose and choose without regret. Look forward and be enthusiastic. 12. Keep healthy and take care of yourself. Exercise your mind, body and spirit so you can be someone people count on, and so you can live expansively and with abundance. Self-management means different things in different fields:

In business, education, and psychology, self-management refers to methods, skills, and strategies by which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the achievement of objectives, and includes goal setting, decision making, focusing, planning, scheduling, task tracking, self-evaluation, self-intervention, self-development, etc. Also known as executive processes (in the context of the processes of execution). In the field of computer science, self-management refers to the process by which computer systems will (one day) manage their own operation without human intervention. Self-Management technologies are expected to pervade the next generation of network management systems. In the field of medicine and health care, self-management means the interventions, training, and skills by which patients with a chronic condition, disability, or disease can effectively take care of themselves and learn how to do so. Personal care applied to outpatients. See also self care. In condominiums and housing co-operatives, it refers to apartment buildings or housing complexes that are run directly by the owners themselves, either through a committee structure, or through a Board of Directors that has management as well as executive functions. In political economy, economics and sociology, self-management may refer to a Self-managed economy, a type of socialist economic system that is based on various forms of collaborative, decentralized, inclusive decision-making and relative workplace autonomy in economic enterprises and the government.

Self-management may also refer to:

Workers' self-management - a form of workplace decision-making in which the employees themselves agree on choices (for issues like customer care, general production methods, scheduling, division of labor etc.) instead of the traditional supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it. This was the official development strategy of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Workers self-management was promoted on all levels in society.

Self-managed Companies Some business leaders have begun to structure their companies as either partially or fully self-managed. A fully self-managed company is one that imposes no formal hierarchical structure upon employees (in some cases, having no hierarchy whatsoever). Some companies (e.g. Google, famous for their 20 Percent Time), allow their employees to have free rein for a portion of their time, pursuing projects that they find interesting or promising without requiring consent or authorization from management. In 2009, authors Isaac Getz of ESCP Europe Business School, and Brian Carney, of The Wall Street Journal, published the book Freedom, Inc., which made the case for businesses based upon the principles of freedom. They advocate removing bureaucratic rules and regulations and allowing employees to do what they do well without traditional "managerial" intervention. Some of the more notable companies detailed in their book:

IDEO W. L. Gore & Associates Semco, made famous by their president, Ricardo Semler, in his book Maverick

The Morning Star Company, a privately held food processing and agribusiness company, is a fully self-managed company, having no formal hierarchy, and allowing colleagues within the company to commit to their own activities, organize their own work, and coordinate their own working relationships with other colleagues. Morning Star was the initial sponsor of the Morning Star Self-Management Institute, a research and training organization aimed at furthering the principles of Self-Management in organizations.